[Fiware-wpa] [WPA/WPL meeting] randomly taken notes, 14.07.2011

Farkas, Lorant (NSN - HU/Budapest) lorant.farkas at nsn.com
Thu Jul 14 17:42:32 CEST 2011


Juanjo, Alex, Pier Garino, Lorant, Andreas, Torsten, Hans, Juan
Bareno/ATOS

Juanjo:
-Summary from the AB meeting: 2 parts in the meeting. First - HLD
presentations, all the chapters, split into 2 days. It took 5 hours the
first day, 1 hour the second day. Second part: how to work with the
notion of backlog. Important to share with WPL/WPA-s - we need to
rollout in FI-WARE. Aspects related to the template were addressed for
the backlog and about how we would run the process, what tools would be
put in place and so on.
-Number of notes with remarks, Thierry sent additional notes that we can
review. Starting with Juanjo's.
-In general terms the presentation was welcome. One of the positive
comments was that people now understand better what we have offered to
deliver and that concept of GE has become more clear to them because at
the beginning this concept was very abstract, but now they really
understand better what we mean by GE.
-In general they are eager to know more details and understand better
what we plan to deliver for each of the GE that we identified. We
provided more details, because of that they want to know even more to
really understand precisely what we are going to deliver, what
interfaces we plan to support, to really evaluate how they could use the
services we provide, what will be the impact of using our GE-s in their
design. Juanjo explained that it needs to be refined over time but we
cannot precise right now in all respects. But this is a positive thing
that they want to know what interfaces we want to support.
-One comment for the official delivery scheduled next week is that they
believe that if we want to support a concrete standard interface/spec,
we should clearly state that. There are a couple of examples: OMA in the
pub/sub enabler - point was that this was not clearly stated. We have to
review in general when we want to follow a given standard, if not
already explicitly stated in the current description.
-Additional general comment is that they feel like the document lookes
like it has been developed by separate teams - missing cross references,
terms that should be used more consistently across the document -
sometimes similar terms in different chapters and not with the same
meaning. Juanjo explained we are solving this right now.
-Additional comment was that although we are complete in scope, there
might be some gaps that may correspond to the needs they have - how are
those gaps covered. Led to a discussion how to open the budget of the
open calls. Juanjo told them that part of the budget will be used to
cover gaps that were already identified (not all GE-s are enablers for
which there is an asset), but there might be other gaps derived from the
inputs from them. We explained that it is important that they provide
the necessary input to identify those gaps.
-As a complement to these comments all of them made a request to set up
some tools to communicate with different chapter teams to ask questions
and clarifications about docs, Juanjo wanted to discuss this because we
need to agree on what we provide them as means for allowing them to ask
and exchange information and answer questions they may have on the GE-s.
-Juanjo takes a look at the minutes of Thierry, no generic points were
mentioned there. Discussion on why OMA was chosen instead of other
standard, Juanjo explained that we don't want to support multiple
pub/sub mechanisms in the platform, we have to make our choices. Number
of questions about particular GE-s - general comment to contact the
teams to ask clarifications. For ASE there was discussion on what we
mean by SLA management, this was clarified and explained that it has to
do with the availability of the service, not what the application is
doing in itself.
-Lot of confusion at the beginning, they thought the part with the
connected device interfaces is about IoT - they wondered why is it not
there - these doubts were solved.
-Question about reference to the TMF and FI-WARE position wrt that - we
could not give a good answer. Should add in the document for the final
delivery. 
-Security/trust/privacy: some of them explained that they found some
gaps, elements they thought would be necessary to cover as a common GE
across different domains, but they didn't find that. E.g. encryption in
general and public key management.

-What do we think could be the steps/instruments to set up
communications and indeed is it a good idea - nice to have
communication, but we have a risk that we receive a tsunami of
clarification requests and answering these may become a lot of work.
Juanjo: mailing list per chapter using the same ID for the mailing list
and add a suffix. Could be put in place for the starting. Was discussed
that we should have better tools - a task force was set up to come to
the next AB meeting (end of August) with proposal for other social,
collaborative tools to get in touch with other use case project.
Management of innovation, forum - was proposed as one possibility. TID
would like to take a look at tools like JCard useful for SW development,
maybe useful for collaborative projects as well. In the meantime FI-WARE
committed to put in place these means, concretely mailing lists.
Alex: Excel spreadsheets to get them organized and keep track of them.
Juanjo: it is important that for sure if someone makes a question and we
provide an answer, we should keep a trace of that. We could put in place
this mechanism in a way to generate this FAQ or spreadsheet mentioned
could be a tool generating this.
Alex: comments are useful for internal work on the doc. Keep record of
the changes/responses - it could be Excel or more modern cooperation
tools.
Juanjo: how would it work with Excel? Columns with the questions and the
answers? What format?
Alex: templates that can be use for document reviews. Each row would
represent a comment, question or request for clarification. Document the
exact chapter, status of the question, the doc has been changed to
address that and so on.
Juanjo: 2 things - the format of what we aim to generate as a result -
could be a table, useful to create the personally asked
questions/content that we upload. Second aspect is how to
monitor/follow-up the states of each comment and whether it has been
addressed or not, how etc. Juanjo would favor using instead of
spreadsheet a tracking system, there would be a workflow, producing the
content uploaded as a contribution to the FAQ and change this in the
document as well. 
Juanjo: DOW - we promised to put a tracking system to the external
world/usage areas - boundary.
Alex: agrees.
Pier Garino: mailing list should be first answer. In favor of
collaborative tools, forum's solution for instance - free to use.
Managing them is difficult. So in favor of a tracking tool like
bugzilla. Concern: we add overhead.
Torsten: objects against mailing lists/tools. Should be based on
tasks/activities. Interface between UA projects and us is that they
provide user stories/requirements at the end, these are the main
concepts that communicate. From our perspective it's the GE. Both of
them are in the agile system that we are supposed to keep.
Juanjo: 2 different interfaces - one has to do with the creation of
backlog - will be elaborated later. Here we are working on a very
concrete point raised by UA projects - I need clarification on what you
mean by the concrete section of the HLD.
Torsten: of course, there might be questions about the content. There
could be a structure or we don't have that but have 1 person
responsible. We don't need the interface between UA and FI-WARE too
broad. Any questions could be attached to a GE, if this is available, we
keep track of the backlog, we can create a new task for this element,
the task solving a problem or a misunderstanding. Should do the
collaboration as focused/concrete as possible.
Alex: same system as we keep the stories?
Juanjo: difficult to understand for him. It was agreed that we have to
start working to set up the backlog for the different enablers in
FI-WARE. UA projects understand they are capturing requirements from end
users and they will map them to features they would like to see as
features in FI-WARE - this we would handle in the backlog. Previous to
that we should handle if they do not understand something. They may need
the answers in order to provide an input, a request for a feature.
Agrees that anything that has to do with asking for a feature and a GE
should be handled through the backlog. Answering doubts, clarifying
things is different. The resolution of that leads to FAQ corner maybe in
the website. Doesn't need to need to a generation of an entry in the
backlog. Agree on this? Maybe we should say: there are 2 mechanisms -
clarification for things you don't understand in the doc - should lead
to the development of FAQ, second channel is anything to do with asking
features, through the backlog. Rejected if proposed to the first
channel, limited to doubts, clarification. Could we agree with that
approach?
Andreas: does not understand the concept of answering questions - they
should go to global technical activities, somebody who has an overview.
If we answer p2p manner, we have exploding communication.
Juanjo: for comments/questions we should provide to them only one
mailing list?
Andreas: not mailing list, system where it can be
posted/commented/answered when people can take a look what were the
questions before. Otherwise people will ask the same question several
times.
Juanjo: so in favor to a tracking system?
Andreas: yes, and all answered questions to be made available to all
people.
Juanjo: then we have to agree then about the management of the incoming
tickets - handled centralized, allocated to a WP team.
Andreas: agrees
Hans: fine with the last proposal
ATOS: also agrees with this
Juanjo: the tool we put in place would be a tracking system. We have to
analyse them
Torsten: we have forge
Juanjo: yes, we can use that or activate other plugins not currently
activated. Needs to doublecheck with people from infrastructure
Lorant: proposes forge per techincal chapter
Juanjo: no strong opinion on this
Alex: it is important to know who is asking the question. If opened for
the public later on?
Juanjo: we should be able to identify the person, should not be an
issue.
Alex: easier for us if we receive many such questions to understand who
is asking what and have few contact points with the UA projects
Lorant: maybe just 1 per UA
Juanjo: we have to decide tracking system per chapter or per whole.
Alex: filter per specific WP?
Juanjo: yes, so that we can categorize questions to go to a particular
chapter. Later on the changing of this field instead of opening a ticket
in another tracking system. Would go for one single tracking system with
ability to filter tickets on chapters and to doublecheck that the tool
we use supports this. This would be the starting option to explore.
-Juanjo: before communicating with the UA projects, Juanjo will send an
e-mail to us.

Definition of the backlog and how to organize the work
-Juanjo sent a template that was agreed for the backlog. Hopes it is
more or less self explanatory. For the sake of the time Juanjo will not
go through this in very detail. In general it has everything that would
be needed to explain a feature that would be requested from a given
enabler in FI-WARE.
-Points that we need to take into account:
	-backlog would be used by some UA projects for managing the
development of the use case applications, but not all UA projects will
follow that path
	-everyone recognized there are 2 levels that we have to take
into accound when embracing the backlog. In a first approach UA projects
will interview end users, they would start identifying trends that are
high level descriptions of areas they cover, epics that are topics they
cover, up to user stories. These later are something concrete that a
development could take an input to develop a given part of a use case
application. They will follow this process this month, the user stories
may generate are not in the format or the way that are useful for
FI-WARE. They need to translate things into features they would require
from FI-WARE that are meaningful for us. They realized finally that the
exercise they have to do when they deal with a user story (end user)
from their perspective they need to think how to implement that user
story. When analyzing this, they may come with a given need that they
have to submit to the FI-WARE path. There are 2 level of users - we have
end users, meaningful for UA projects - these are the actors and the
main characters in their user stories, but in the backlog the user is
the app developer, that is the use case project. They have to generate
entrance that is relevant for the platform as part of the process to
find out how to solve a user story they might have identified. They will
try to implement this. The backlog will have a mix of entries relevant
for use case projects for which the notion of user will mean the end
user, others will be users for the platform, that is the use case
project. It was identified that there is a need to establish that
certain field identifies what the user means for a particular entry.
	-in parallel we ourselves should be able to start filling up the
backlog with features with entries for the GE-s that we idntified that
we plan to address in the project. Regarding the backlog UA projects and
FI-WARE will work in parallel streams therefore: use cases for the
FI-WARE platform and us defining entries for the GE-s that we
identified.
-To start working, a tool will be put in place - Agilefant - Concord
will set up this tool. Will make it available before July the 20th. We
will start ourselves to work filling the entries corresponding to
different chapters and GE-s.
-A given UA project when discovering that for implementing a user story
they need something from the platform, they may initially formulate an
entry, but may not be able to assign this to a particular FI-WARE
chapter, because they might not know where this will be address (they
may also know). If don't know, we should discuss with them, determine
how these entries will lead to either assignment to a chapter in FI-WARE
or categorized to 'common enabler' but out of the scope of FI-WARE. This
will mean negotiations with them.
Is the model clear?
-Alex: makes sense. Will there be education on the tool?
-Juanjo: we need to set up the tool first (Concord), then some training
would be setup, the tool is quite easy, should not be that difficult.
-Alex: best practices, metodology - we should agree on
-Juanjo: will be addressed during the coming weeks
-Juanjo: another thing is about the distiction of the different levels
of granularity that we would cover in the backlog. For this Juanjo plans
to provide concrete definitions of what an epic, user story etc would be
with some examples. Provided along with the accessibility to the tool.
We should be able to start filling entries in the backlog
-Lorant: no questions at this point
-Juanjo: will send an e-mail on details, maybe it is better to write
this down.
-Pier Garino: guidelines to use the tools - even it takes time - is it
possible to provide sort of video capturing the screen and highlighting
the main items/actions to use the tool?
-Juanjo: agilefant.org already provides this info, even a video, online
demo where one can play with the tool. We are not going to use all the
features of agilefant, just those ones with the management of backlog
entries.
-Pier Garino: if looks up the website, might learn in a cold start way,
from scratch. If there is a preparation of short demo of what to use of
the tool for our purpose only, this would be a warm start. Several
partners in his partner were asking the same on forge - took some time
to reply to all of them. There are tools capturing screenshots/video
what you are doing, just to start doing that.
-Juanjo: true, but we may say let's wait and do not start until we have
this tutorial/manual and then we may become bottlenecked. Juanjo takes
the point and maybe something should be produced what highlights what to
use and what not to use. Such manual we should not wait to be perfect
-Alex: training sessions were mentioned - could we record them so that
other refers them later?
-Juanjo: will check. Not sure what technology we could use, there might
be some possibilities, point taken.
-Hans: agrees with Pier Garino
-Andreas: would like to see an example of the life cycle of the backlog
-Juanjo: realistically, we could devote the second part of July to carry
out the training, prepare the tutorials, additional documentation for
the lifecycle of entries, transcoding of UA user stories to FI-WARE user
stories, maybe before starting to create entries in a wild manner.
-ATOS: no comments/questions
-Juanjo: in the AB the way how agilefant will be used was discussed, we
need to create docs for this. Some of the UA raised the issue that the
planning that we had in place was very tough, they anticipated they may
be late.

AoB for AB:
-No questions on the arch board

Where we are:
-IoT: will produce final version by end of the week. No input from
security. Question marks are referring only to security, might add 1 or
2 points based on the received comments.
-Juanjo: one generic comment - unique selling point section. It becomes
(like ASE people recommended) "critical product attributes". Juanjo
would like feed
-IoT: agrees
-Pier Garino/Hans: Juanjo - peer review with cloud hosting chapter,
comments were received? A: shared with Juanjo and Alex end of last week
concerning a point the cloud edge definition. Worked on a proposal to
modify the text so that there are less conflicting between the 2
enablers from the 2 different chapters. More in general reviewed the
content of cloud hosting, they are adding comments to the document,
taking as a baseline the purpose to identify points difficult to
understand by the readers. Purpose is to send it tomorrow to Alex for
revision and decide whether to accept comments or not.
-Juanjo: suggestion is to discuss on the weekly conf call on Friday
during 15:30, go through them there.
-Pier Garino: OoO for several weeks, agrees to discuss it with Alex.
-Juanjo: recommends 15:30. Alex can't make it. Recommends that Juanjo
and team synchronizes.
-Juanjo: takes the call with them, go through most of the thing and
understand the insight on the comment. Alex will work on Sunday. If any
doubt, Alex will contact Juanjo.
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